Supreme Court Sides With Jack Smith And Slaps Down Elon Musk

The US Supreme Court this week handed down a ruling that is a victory for Jack Smith and a major repudiation of Elon Musk and social media companies. Musk had been trying to protect Donald Trump from Smith’s investigation by refusing to comply with an order from the government that prevented him from notifying Trump that the feds were after his Twitter feed. The Court decided that Musk had no authority to resist the order, and they refused to make any parameters clear about when, or even if, social media companies have the right to defy orders like these. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Elon Musk suffered a humiliating defeat at the United States Supreme Court this week that also ended up being a minor victory for Jack Smith. So here's what happened. Elon Musk, as the owner of X or Twitter for us, normal people, decided last year that he wanted to challenge Jack Smith's authority when Jack Smith sought Donald Trump's, uh, Twitter account and all of the internal messages and all of that stuff, but put a protective order in place that prevented Musk from alerting Donald Trump to the fact that the feds were trying to get his Twitter account. When Elon Musk tried to challenge this in court, he lost, he, uh, uh, had to pay $350,000 after being found in contempt. And the prosecutors, of course, were able to get their hands on Donald Trump's Twitter information, which then just a week ago was released in that unsealed court filing. So now we know why Jack Smith needed it and how important it is to his case, but Musk wasn't done with his fight after being fined $350,000 for being in contempt of court.

Oh, no. He decided to take his case all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, and he put it on them to determine under what circumstances a tech company can be compelled to turn over information on its users while being prevented from alerting those users that they're being investigated. And on Monday, the United States Supreme Court said, no, we, we don't care. We're not gonna take up your case, dude, you lost. And it's over. The Supreme Court's decision to not take up the case does in fact mean that it's over. There is nothing must can do, but this kind of, it doesn't set necessarily a case precedent, but it does set a bit of a precedent for not just Twitter, but all social media companies, right? If they get a subpoena, if federal investigators come knocking on the door and they say, we need this person's account, and you can't tell them we're getting into their account, they would have that authority.

And the Supreme Court has made it clear we're not gonna overturn it. And here's the thing. Here is why this, of course, is very important. If Elon Musk had alerted Donald Trump to the fact that, hey, the Feds are about to get your Twitter account, you know, just so you know what happens. Well, what Jack Smith feared was that Donald Trump was gonna go in there, start deleting a bunch of stuff, and it wouldn't be findable because obviously Elon Musk isn't saving a copy of that. No, not against his good buddy, Donald. So they needed to make sure that they had unfettered access to this without

Donald Trump having the opportunity to go in there and destroy any of the evidence that they were seeking. So yes, the investigators, the prosecutors, in this case, that is the right call. That is what they should have done. Musk, on the other hand, will do anything to protect his new best buddy Donald. But even in front of a, a conservative Supreme Court, they said, well, we really don't care.